


so let us melt and make no noise

by Ani



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, Magic Realism, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 19:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ani/pseuds/Ani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He doesn’t feel anything when it happens.<br/>“Just sign here,” Mycroft says, and offers him the needle.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sherlock sacrifices himself on the roof of St. Bart's. John would do anything, <b>anything</b>, to bring him back to life. And Mycroft knows someone who knows someone...</p>
            </blockquote>





	so let us melt and make no noise

     “Is there any... just _any_ chance... that he - that he faked it somehow? That he isn’t dead? Being some big clever show-off instead?”      

    Mycroft looks at him with a soft pity and says, gently, “No, John. Would you like to see the body?”

     John nods.

     No, he doesn’t. But he will.

     Mycroft thanks Molly with a clasp of her hand and, after she leaves and locks the door, he pulls out the tray and unzips the bag and there Sherlock is. There’s Sherlock's corpse, cut open and restitched up. John knows it’s him. Knows it absolutely.

     He lays a palm on Sherlock’s head, on his heart, and then limps quickly out of the room to vomit.

 

 

 

     He has another conversation with Mycroft a few days later.

     “I would do _anything_ ,” he says, choking. “Just to.. just for a minute just... the eyes even seeing his eyes I would...”

     Mycroft exhales. Pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, mouth firm. John wonders if this is how he keeps from crying. John lets the crying happen. He wants to fly through this grief as quickly as possible because it’s too awful to be in, too shaking too static too bleak too black.

    Mycroft looks like he is considering something.

    And then he sighs again, and sets his teacup down with a slight china clatter, and says, “Anything?”

    “Yes,” John says immediately.

    “There is a lot of anything in this world,” Mycroft says quietly. “I would consider those words very carefully.”

    “Anything.” This time he says it devoutly.

    “Then,” Mycroft says, “there is something we can do.”

 

 

 

 

     He doesn’t feel anything when it happens.

     “Just sign here,” Mycroft says, and offers him the needle. John pricks his finger and writes his name in blood. _I,_   _John Hamish Watson, do give the undersigned, hereafter Signor, the full rights to my soul as long as I shall live and for full use after in the matter deemed best by Signor, and moreover..._

“And here.” Mycroft turns the page. John leans close to read it in the flickering yellow light of the candles. __

_...from the moment of signature. This is in exchange of one (1) life returned to the deceased, hereafter Sherlock Holmes, resurrected fully and immediately. I the Signor understand that an incomplete resurrection or other problems with the body will result in full forfeiture of the rights of the soul John Hamish Watson and moreover...._

“Here.” Mycroft folds the paper, and slips it into a thick envelope, and seals it with red wax. “Your thumb on the seal, please.” __

John presses his blood into it.

     “Thank you,” the sharp-white man says. He slips it into his suit and bows slickly. “Signor is notified and appreciative of your gift. He wishes you find full satisfaction in your requested resurrection.”

“Is it time?” John asks. __

“When you are ready,” Mycroft says. “And...thank you.”

     “Of course,” John says softly, and Mycroft nods, and walks out of the room with the bone-thin stranger and shuts the door behind them.

      _If inconvenient..._ he thinks.

     He takes a deep breath and goes to Sherlock’s bed, where the corpse has been laid out under a sheet. He pulls it back. The body lays there inert, flat, empty. It has been redressed without the dirt of the burial. It shows no signs of decay, of course.

     John cuts into the tip of his thumb, a slice on the edge of a silver knife, and gently strokes Sherlock’s bottom lip. It is like red paint on the pale pink and oozes in a very slow drip down his little cupid bow, down to his tongue.

     The moment Sherlock tastes John’s blood he opens his eyes. And gasps and scrambles up and gasps again, fear shining, dark mydriasis, stares at his hands, at the sheet in his lap, throws it off, looks up, and stares at John. 

      John sees his eyes again. They are as blue and grey and green as he remembered.

     They do not grab him and pull him in the way he remembered.

      “Hello,” John says.

      “I...died,” Sherlock says.

      “Yes. I brought you back.”

      Sherlock stares at him in awe. In gratitude. He raises one trembling hand up and brushes John’s cheek.

      John smiles and stands up and tells him to get up, he’ll need to move around before he feels comfortable.

 

 

 

 

     They tell everyone Sherlock faked his death for three weeks. It’s a bit ridiculous but sufficiently persuasive. Lestrade rolls his eyes and looks like he wants to hit him but he lets him on the scene anyway. Sherlock investigates. John watches. It’s Sherlock who finds the child’s body first.

     “Strung by piano wire like the mother,” he observes. “Look here, at the strings that are missing. E, high C. Initials? Or a message. If it’s a message there might be another body.”

     “The toddlers were twins,” Lestrade says, looking sick.

     “Fascinating,” John says.

 

 

 

 

     A woman starts screaming for a doctor’s help and John pushes her aside, pushes so hard she clatters down to the pavement which, really, wasn’t his goal but it _is_ an emergency and her girlfriend is gasping for air around a thick throat. “Peanut allergy,” Sherlock says behind them in deductive announcement. Neither of the strangers have an epi pen. “Idiots,” John says, and stands up and steps back away to call for an ambulance.

 

 

 

     Sherlock starts crying and the woman in the shop starts cooing and says she’ll be right back for a tissue and Sherlock slips the key out from under the cash register and into his pocket and when the woman comes back she whispers, “I lost my mother too, just a few months ago,” and he says “Yes, it’s been very difficult,” and when they leave John snickers and compliments him on the brilliant distraction.

 

 

 

     He gets a card from Bill Murray’s wife about his diagnosis. At first John is going to send a condolence letter but then he gets busy and forgets and besides, what good is a letter going to do, it won’t stop the man from dying.

 

 

 

     “Get that bloody mess out of the fridge,” John tells him.

     “It’s important,” Sherlock says. “I need to analyze the blood pooling for-”

     “Did I ask for a report? Or did I ask you to clean out your fucking mess?”

     Sherlock actually looks hurt. Which is so astonishing John laughs at it.

 

 

 

     “I jush think we should visit,” Harry says, pitifully, whining into the phone.

     “I’d bother if you were sober,” John says. Harry hangs up on him. Probably to drink some more, he thinks, and pockets his phone.

 

 

 

     “We’re expected at the Yard,” Sherlock says, pulling on his gloves.

     “Busy,” John says, hunting for his checkbook.

     “It’s going to be interesting. Locked door, no windows.”

     “I’ll join you later.”

     “Could be dangerous,” Sherlock says.

     “Lestrade’s team will be there, yes?”

     There’s a note of desperation in his voice. “I could use you, John.”

     “Yes. Yes, I know how much you like to use me.”

     The door slams loudly.

 

 

 

     “Oh, I wouldn’t have expected you to understand,” Sherlock says, when he unravels the cipher. John is tired of the insults. He decides to show Sherlock how much it hurts to be called names, because explaining and asking sure haven’t helped. “You’re completely horrible,” he says, and Sherlock just scoffs.

     But when he later calls him a machine without a heart,that makes Sherlock pause and look away and still.

 

 

 

     “Stop with your _bloody_ racket!”

     “I did once warn you I play the violin."

     “Yes. _Play_ it, as in actual music, not that horrible screeching you’re making. You also said you could go days without talking, you want to try that?”

 

 

 

     John comes home to find Sherlock high on his sofa, spinning away in some cocaine spiral. “And you wonder,” John says, looking at him with disgust, “why you don’t have any friends.”

 

 

 

     One morning he hears Sherlock crying in the bathroom. That evening Mycroft appears at the flat at Sherlock’s bidding and they have an angry, whispered conversation in his bedroom. John hears his own name a few times. He presses his ear against the door.

     “It’s not _fair_ ,” Sherlock howls.

     “He’s no different than us,” Mycroft says blandly.

     He can’t hear the response because Sherlock is crying again.

     Ridiculous.

 

 

 

     When John returns from getting his dinner the white bone man is standing quietly in their living room.

     “There must be _something_ ,” Sherlock says. “This isn’t worth it. I don’t want it.”

     “It cannot be exchanged,” the man says. “I could not convince Signor of it.”

     “But if I’m dead-”

     “A suicide does not change the terms of the contract.”

     Sherlock hisses and smacks his palm on the arm of the chair. John notes mentally, again, how childish his flatmate can be. He sits down at the table and starts to eat since they’re going to ignore that he’s there anyway.

     “It’s not right. I don’t want him like this.”

     “You do not have to keep him,” the man says. “That is not in the contract. You are not obligated to remain with him and have no further legal ties.”

     “Get out,” Sherlock commands. “Get out.”

     The man bows and leaves noiselessly.

     John is angry to be left out, once again, of a conversation about him. He says, “You know, I did this for you.”

     Sherlock puts his head in his hands.

 

 

 

     “You’re just like Freak now, aren’t you?” Donovan asks. She sounds concerned.

     “Another ‘high functioning sociopath’?” Anderson sneers.

     “I quit,” Sherlock says. “I quit.” He walks under the crime tape and out of the scene and walks until he disappears into the city.

     John shrugs at Lestrade’s open mouth and walks off himself, maybe to stop at the pub before he’s home, or play a bit of cards.

     It’s the last case Sherlock ever takes.

 

 

 

     “I didn’t want _this_ ,” Mycroft says. “What is that?”

     “A seven percent solution.”

     “I’ll...” he trails off. He looks at John. A threat has clearly fallen flat in his mouth. “I am deeply sorry, Sherlock.”

     “You just wanted me back. You didn’t care about him.”

     “It was worth it to me,” Mycroft says. “But not, I suppose, if you’re going to waste it on drugs again.”

 

 

 

     “But you had to take _John’s_?” Sherlock says, with a broken throat. He sounds desperate. John walks past them to get a cup of tea.

     “My dear brother, exactly how many people do you think are willing to give up their soul for your life? Mine was weighed and deemed unworthy. Our kind aren’t to their use.”

     “No,” the bone man says, turning to Sherlock, “that is not true. Yours now, we consider sufficient.”

     They turn to look at him. Sherlock looks startled but in wonder. Mycroft is rapidly shaking his head.

     “Yours could be entered in an exchange. Young souls are worth very much.”

     “Young?”

     The man bows to Sherlock. “Only eighteen months old. Signor is very interested.”

     John snorts, because he knows what started eighteen months ago and is amused that this is an _improvement_ for Sherlock.

     “And he would accept a trade,” Sherlock says.

     “No,” says Mycroft, “I refuse.”

     “It's not your choice,” Sherlock snaps.

     “Yes,” the bone man says. “Signor will take your soul for his.”

 

 

 

      Mycroft and Sherlock yell at each other while the stranger with paper skin writes up a new document, black on cream.

     “If one of us has to be a sociopath,” Sherlock hisses, “it is _not_ going to be him.”

     “Sherlock, no,” his brother begs. “You don’t want it, the thorough cold, you’re finally starting to understand...”

     “We will need him to sign,” the man says, politely.

     Sherlock yanks the jack knife out of the mantle, slices open his palm, smears the blood onto the page with a grimace of pain. It splatters on the floor, on his white shirt. It falls on the snow-flesh gentlemen but leaves no trace behind.

     John stands up as soon as Sherlock steps forward. He bolts, but Sherlock is faster, sweeping forward and grabbing him. John twists his arm to escape, throws his elbow into Sherlock’s jaw; Sherlock sinks fingers into his shoulder scar and twists. John yelps. It’s enough, just one brief moment of paralyzation, for a genius like his attacker. Sherlock cuts into the first place he can reach, into the jaw line. He catches the drop with a rough scratch of the paper.

     “If only one of us can have a heart,” he whispers, “it should be you.”

     The effect is instantaneous.

      John gasps and chokes out a sob and stumbles down.

     Sherlock lets him fall.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from John Donne's [_A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning_](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15468).


End file.
